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MASSACHUSETTS IN ^TOURNIN(i. 






SERMON, 



PREACHED 



IN WORCESTER, ON SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1854. 



BY 

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 

Minister of the Worcester Free Church. 



REPRINTED, BY REQUEST, FROM THE WORCESTER DAILY SPY. 



BOSTON: 

JA]\rES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 

1854. 






In Bxchfttigo 
Cornell Univ. 

9 Fob 05 



boston: 

peess of prentiss and sawyer, 

No. 19 Water Street. 



S E 11 M N . 



Shall the iron lircnk the Northern iron and the steel r — Jeuemi.vh xv. 12. 

You have imagined my subject beforehand, for there is but 
one subject on which I could preach, or you could listen, to- 
day. Yet, hoAv hard it is to say one word of that. You do 
not ask, at a funeral, that tlie bereaved mourners themselves 
should speak, but you call in one a little farther removed, to 
utter words of comfort'. If cotnfort there be. But to-day is, t)r 
should be, to every congregation in INIassachusetts, a day of 
funeral service — we are all mourners — and what is there for 
me to say ? 

Yet, even in this gloom, the faculty of wonder is left ; as 
at funerals, men ask in a lo-sv tone, around the coffin, what 
was the disease that smote this fail- form, and are we safe from 
the infection ? So we now ask, what is lost, and how have 
we lost it, and what have we left ? Is it all gone, (men say,) 
that old New England heroism and enthusiasm ? Is there 
any disinterested love of Freedom left in Massachusetts ? 
And then they think with joy, (as I do,) that, at least. Free- 
dom did not die without a struggle, and that it took thousands 
of armed men to lay her in the grave at last. 



4 MASSACHUSETTS IX MOUEXING. 

I am thankful for all this. Words are nothing — ^ye have 
been surfeited with words for twenty years. I am thankful 
that this time there was action also ready for Freedom. God 
gave men bodies, to live and work in ; the powers of those 
bodies are the first things to be consecrated to the Right. He 
gave us liigher powers, also, for weapons, but, in using those, 
we must not forget to hold the lower ones also ready ; else 
we miss oui- proper manly life on earth, and lay down our 
means of iisefulness before we have outgrown them. " Ren- 
der imto Csesar the tilings which are Caesai-'s and unto God 
the things which are God's." Our souls and bodies are both 
God's, and resistance to tyrants is obedience to Him, 

If you meet men whose souls are contaminated, and have 
time enough to work on them, you can deal ^vith them by the 
weapons of the soul alone ; but if men array brute force 
against Freedom — pistols, clubs, drilled soldiers, and stone 
walls — then the body also has its part to do in resistance. 
You must hold yoiu'self above men, I own, yet not too far 
above to reach them. 

I do not like even to think of taking life, only of giving it ; 
but physical force that is forcible enough, acts without blood- 
shed. They say that with twenty more men at hand, that 
Friday night, at the Boston Coiut House, the Slave might 
have been rescued without even the death of that one man — 
who was perhaps killed by his frightened companions, then 
and there. So you see force may not mean bloodshed ; and 
calm, irresistible force, in a good cause, becomes sublime. 
The strokes on the door of that Coiu't House that night for 
instance — they may perchance have disturbed some dreamy 
saint from his meditations, (if dreamy saints abound in Coui't 
Square,) — but I think they went echoing from town to town. 



MASSACHUSETTS IN MOl UXING. 5 

from Boston to far Xcav Oilcans, like tlu> fiist dnini l)cat of 
the Revolution — and each rcverbcratin<( throb Mas a blow 
upon the door of every Slave-prison of this s?uihy Kopiiblic. 

That first faint throb of ]jil)erty was a proud thin^' for 
Boston ; Boston Mliich was a scene so funereal a Mcck after. 
Men say the act of one Friday iiclped prepare for the next ; 
I am glad if it did. 11' tlic attack on the Court House had no 
greater effect than to send that Slave away under a guard of 
two thousand men, instead of two hundred, it was worth a 
dozen lives. If we ai-e all Slaves indeed — if there is no law 
in ^Massachusetts except the telegraphic orders from "Wash- 
ington — if our own military are to be made Slave-catchers — 
if oiu" Governor is a mere piece of State ceremony, permitted 
only to rise at a militaiy dinner and thank liis oAvn soldiers 
for their reacUness to slioot down liis own constituents, Mnthout 
even the delay of a riot act — if Massachusetts is merely a 
conquered })rovince and under martial law — ilun J iris/i to 
Jcnoiv it, and I am grateful for eveiy additional gini and sabre 
that forces the truth deeper into oxu- hearts. Lower, Massa- 
chusetts, lower, kneel still lower ! Serve, Irish ^Marines ! the 
kidnajjpers, youi* masters ; dovm in the dust, citizen soldieiy ! 
before the Irish Marines, and for you, (Io\eruor, a lower 
huniilitv vet, and your homage must be paid, at second hand, 
before the stained and soiled "citizen soldiery."' 

I remember the great trades-procession in Jioston, a few- 
years since, in honor of the visitors from the North, from the 
free soil of Canada. Then all choice implements, which 
Massachusetts had invented to supply the industry- of the 
world, were brought forth for exhibition, and superb was the 
show. This time we had \-isitors from the South — the South 
wliich uses tools also — and imports them all, "hoes, spades. 



6 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 

axes, politicians, and ministers." So the last new implements, 
for her use, were to be exhibited now. There were twenty- 
one specimens of Boston military companies. There were the 
two hundred more confidential bullies, for whom the city was 
ransacked, men so vile, that it was said the police had no 
duties left, for all the dangerous persons were employed as 
policemen themselves, — > men whom a PoHce Judge haying 
inspected, recognized criminal after criminal, who had been 
sentenced by liimself to the House of Correction ; these came 
next. Truly as there is joy in heaven over one sinner who 
repenteth, so there was joy in Boston that day, over one 
sinner who had not repented, —^ aver every man in whom the 
powers of hell were strong enough, aided by public brandy, 
to fit him for that terrible service. Those were the tools 
marshalled forth for exhibition. But why were these only 
shown ? Why were the finer, the more precious implements 
kept invisible that day, the real engines of that Slaveholder's 
triumph ? Why not make the picture perfect ? Place, 
Chief Marshal, between the Slave and the guardian cannon, 
the crowning glory of that sad procession, the Slaveholder in 
his carriage, and chain, on the one side, the Mayor of Boston, 
aiid, on the other side, the Governor of the Commonwealth, 
with the motto, " The Representative Men of Massachusetts, 
— These tools she gives, Virginia^ to thee ! " 

I mean no personality. The men who occupy these offices, 
are men Avho (I have always thought) did them honor. I sup- 
pose that neither would own a Slave, nor (personally) catch one. 
No doubt they favorably represent the average of Massachu- 
setts men. But I introduce them for precisely this reason, to 
show the tragedy of our American institutions, that they take 
average Massachusetts men, put them into public office, and 



MASSACHUSETTS IN JIOURNIXG. 7 

then, demanding more of tlicm than their education gives 
them manUness to meet, — use them, crush them, and drop 
them, into the dishonor -with Avhich these hitherto honored 
men are suddenly overwhehned to-day. 

If such be the influence of our national organization, what 
good do oiu" efforts do ? Our labor to reform the Xorth, -with 
the whole force of nationalized Slavery to resist, is like the 
effort of Sii' John Franklin, on his first voyage, to get north- 
Avard by travelling on the ice. He travelled toward the pole 
for six weeks, no doubt of that ; but at the end of the time 
he was two hundred miles farther from it than when he 
started. The ice had floated southward — and our ice Jloats 
southward also. And so it will be, while this Union concen- 
trates power in the hands of Slaveholders, and gives the 
North only commercial prosperity, the more thoroughly to 
enervate and destroy it. 

Here, for instance, is the Nebraska Emigration Society ; it 
is indeed, a noble enterprise, and I am proud that it owes its 
origin to a Worcester man — but where is the good of emi* 
grating to Nebraska, if Nebraska is to be only a transplanted 
Massachusetts, and the original Massachusetts has been tried 
and found wantinsr 1* Will the stream rise hisrhcr than its 
source ? Settle your Nebraska ten years, and you will have 
your New England harvest of corn and grain, more luximant 
in that vu'gin soil ; — ah, but will not the other Massachu- 
setts crop come also, of political demagogues and wii*e-pullers, 
and a sectarian religion, which will insure the passage of the 
greatest hypocrite to heaven, if he will join the right chiirch 
before he goes ? And give the emigrants twenty years more 
of prosperity, and then ask them, if you dare, to break law 



8 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 

and disturb order, and risk life, merely to save their State 
from the shame that has just blighted Massachusetts ? 

In view of these facts, what stands between us and a mili- 
tary despotism ? " Sure guarantees," you say. So has every 
nation thought until its fall came. " The outward form of 
Roman institutions stood uninjured till long after CaHgula 
had made his horse consul." What is your safeguard? No- 
thing but a parchment Constitution, wliich has been riddled 
through and tlii'ough whenever it pleased the Slave Power ; 
which has not been able to preserve to you the oldest privi- 
leges of Freedom — Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury ! 
Stranger still, that men should think to find a security in our 
material prosperity, and our career of foreign conquest, and 
our acquisition of gold mines, and forget that these have been 
precisely the symptoms which have prophesied the decline of 
every powerful commercial state — Rome, Carthage, Tyre, 
Venice, Spain, Holland, and all the restD 

In the third century after the birth of Jesus, TerulHan 
painted that brilliant picture of the Roman power, which 
describes us, as if it were written for us : 

" Certainly," says he, " the world becomes more and more 
our tributary ; none of its secret recesses have remained 
inaccessible, all are known, frequented, and all have become 
the scene or the object of traffic. Who now di-eads an un- 
known island ? who trembles at a reef ? our ships are sure to 
be met with everywhere — everywhere is a people, a state ; 
everywhere is life. We crush the world beneath cm' weight 
— onerosi sumus mundo." 

And Rome perished, almost when the words were uttered ! 

How simple the acts of our tragedy may be ! Let another 
Fugitive Slave case occur, and more blood be spilt (as might 



MASSACHUSETTS! IN MOURNING. 9 

happen another time ;) — let Massachusetts be declared insur- 
rectionaiy, and placed under martial law, (as it might ;) — let 
the President be made Dictator, "oHth absolute power ; let 
him send his willing Attorney General to buy up officers of 
mihtia, (which would be easy,) and frighten Officers of State, 
(wliicli would be easier;) — let hlni get half the press, and a 
quarter of the pulpits, to sustain his usurpation, under the 
name of " law and order " ; — let the flame spread from New 
England to New York, from New York to Ohio, from Ohio 
to "Wisconsin ; — and liow long would it take for some future 
Franklin Pierce to stand where Louis Napoleon stands now ? 
How much would the commercial leaders of the East resist, 
if an appeal were skilfully made to their pockets ? — or the 
political demagogues of the West, if an appeal were made to 
their ambition ? It seems inconceivable ! Certainly — so 
did the coiq) d'etat of Louis Napoleon, the day before it 
happened ! 

' " Do not despair of the Republic," says some one, remem- 
bering the hopeful old Roman motto. But they had to de- 
spair of that one in the end, — and why not of this one also ? 
Why, when we Avere going on, step by step, as older Repub- 
lics have done, should we expect to stop just as we reach the 
brink of Niagara ?T The love of Liberty grows stronger every 
year, some think, in some places. Thirty years ago, it cost 
only !^25 to restore a Fugitive Slave from Boston, and now it 
costs ^100,000; — but still the Slave is restored. I know 
there are thousands of hearts which stand pledged to Liberty 
now, and these may save the State, in spite of her officials 
and her military ; but can they save the Nation ? They may 
give us disiuiion instead of despotism, but can they give us 
anytliing better .' Can they even give us anything so good ? 



10 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 

We talk of the Anti-Slavery sentiment as being stronger ; but 
in spite of your Free Soil votes, your Uncle Tom's Cabin, and 
your New York Tribunes, here is the simple fact : the South 
beats us more and more easily every time. So chess-players, 
when they have once or twice overcome a weak antagonist, 
think it safe, next time, to give up to him a half dozen pieces 
by way of odds ; — and after all gain the victory. Compare 
this Nebraska game with the previous ones. The Slave 
Power could afford to give us the Wliig party on our side, 
this time — could give up to us the commercial influence of 
Boston and New York, so strong an ally before — it has not 
had the name and presence of Daniel Webster to help it now, 
nor the voices of clergymen, nor the terror of disunion, nor 
the weariness after a long Anti-Slavery excitement : it has 
dispensed with all these ; — nay, the whole contest was on 
our own soil, to defend the poor little landmark we had re- 
treated to long before ; — and for all this, the Slave Power 
has conquered us, just as easily as it conquered us on Texas, 
Mexico, and the compromises of 1850. 

No wonder that tliis excitement is turning Whigs and 
Democrats into Free Sellers, and Free Soilers into disunion- 
ists. But this is only the eddy, after all ; the main current 
sets the wrong way. The nation is intoxicated and depraved. 
It takes all the things you count as influential, — all the 
" spirit of the age," and the " moral sentiment of Christen- 
dom," and the best eloquence and literature of the time, — to 
balance the demorahzation of a single term of Presidential 
patronage. Give the offices of the nation to be controlled by 
the Slave Power, and I tell you that there is not one in ten, 
even of professed Anti-Slavery men, who can stand the fire 
in that furnace of sin ; and there is not a plot so wicked 



MASSACHUSETTS IN MOIKNING. 11 

but it will have, like all its predecessors, a sufficient majority 
when the time comes. 

Do you doubt this ? Name, if you can, a victory of Free- 
dom, or a defeat of the Slave Power, within twenty years, 
except on the right of petition, and even that was onlv a 
recovery of lost ground. Do you say, the politicians are 
false, but the people mark the men who betray them ! True, 
they mark them, but as merchants "mai-k goods, with the cost 
price, that they may raise the price a little, when they want 
to sell the same aiticlc again. You must go back to the 
original Missouri Compromise, if you wish to prove that even 
Massachusetts punishes traitors to Freedom, bv any severer 
penalty than a seat on her Supreme Bench. For myself, I 
<lo not believe in these Anti-SlaA'cry sj)asms of our people, for 
the same reason that Coleridge did not believe in ghosts, 
because I have seen too many of them myself. I remember 
when our Massachusetts delegation in Congress, signed a sort 
of tlu'eat that the State would withdraw from the Union if 
Texas came in, but it never hajipened. I remember the 
State Convention at Faneuil Hall in 18-15, where the lion 
and the lamb lay down together, and George T. Ciu'tis and 
John G. Whitticr Avere Secretaires ; and the Convention sol- 
emnly pronounced the annexation of Texas to be " the over- 
throw of the Constitution, the bond of the existing Union." 
I remember how one speaker boasted that if Texas was voted 
in by joint resolution, it might be voted out by the same. 
But somehow, we have never mustered that amount of resolu- 
tion ; and when I hear of State Street petitioning for the 
repeal of its own Fugitive Slave Law, I remember the lesson. 

For myself, I do not expect to live to see that law repealed 
by the votes of poHticians at Washington. It can only be 



12 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 

repealed by ourselves, upon the soil of Massachusetts. For 
one, I am glad to be deceived no longer. I am glad of the 
discovery — (no hasty thing, but gradually dawning upon me 
for ten years) — that I live under a despotism. I have lost 
the dream that ours is a land of peace and order. I have 
looked thoroughly through our " Fourth of July," and seen 
its hollowness ; and I advise you to petition your City Gov- 
ernment to revoke their appropriation for its celebration, (or 
give the same to the Nebraska Emigration Society,) and only 
toll the bells in all the chiu'ches, and hang the streets in 
black fi'om end to end. O shall ■we hold such ceremonies 
when only some statesman is gone, and omit them over dead 
Freedom, whom all true statesmen only live to serve ! 

At any rate my word of counsel to you is to learn this 
lesson thorouglily — a revolution is begun ! not a Reform, but 
a Revolution. If you take part in politics henceforward, let 
it be only to bring nearer the crisis wliich will either save or 
sunder tliis nation — or perhaps save in sundering. I am not 
very hopeful, even as regards you ; I know the mass of men 
will not make great sacrifices for Freedom, but there is more 
need of those who will. I have lost faith forever in num- 
bers ; I have faith only in the constancy and courage of a 
" forlorn hope." And for aught we know, a case may arise, 
this week, 'in Massachusetts, which may not end Hke the 
last one. 

Let us speak the truth. Under the influence of Slavery, 
we are rapidly relapsing into that state of barbarism in which 
every man must rely on liis own right hand for his protection. 
Let any man yield to his instinct of Freedom, and resist oppres- 
sion, and his life is at the mercy of the first di-unken oflicer 
who orders his troops to fire. For myself, existence looks 



MASSACHUSET rs TN MOURNINO. 13 

Avortliless under sucli circumstances ; and I can only make 
lite worth living for, by becoming a revolutionist. The say- 
ing seems dangerous ; but why not say it if one means it, as 
I certainly do. I respect law and order, but as the ancient 
Persian sage said, " alivai/s to obey the laws, virtue must 
relax much of her vigor." I see, now, that while Slavery is 
national, law and order must constantly be on the wrong side. 
I see that the case stands for me- precisely as it stands for 
Kossuth and ]Mazzini, and I must take the consequences. 

Do you say that ours is a Democratic (jovernmcnt, and 
there is a more peaceable remedy ? I deny that A\e live under 
a Democracy. It is an oligarchy of Slaveholders, and I point 
to the history of a half century to prove it. Do you say, 
that oligarchy will be propiti-ated by submission .'* I deny it. 
It is the plea of the timid in all ages. Look at the expe- 
rience of our own country. Which is most influential in 
Congress — South Carolina, which never submitted to any- 
thing, or Massachusetts, Avith thrice the white j)opulation, but 
M'hich always submits to everythmg ? I tell you, there is not 
a free State in the Union which would dare treat a South 
Carolinian as that State treated ^Ir. Iloar ; or, if it had been 
done, the Union would have been divided years ago. The 
way to make principles felt is to assert them — peaceably, if 
you can ; forcibly, if you must. The way to promote Free 
Soil is to have youi- OAvn soil free ; to leave courts to settle 
constitutions, and to fall back (for your oavu part,) on first 
principles : then it will be seen that you mciui something. 
How much free tcrritoiy is there beneath the Stars and 
Stripes ? I know of foui' places — Syracuse, Wilkesbarre, 
Milwaukie, and Chicago : I remember no others. " AVorces- 
ter," you say. Worcester has not yet been tried. If you 



14 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 

think Worcester County is free, say so and act accordingly. 
Call a County Convention, and declare that vou leave learal 
quibbles to lawyers, and parties to politicians, and plant 
yoursehes on the simple truth that God never made a Slave, 
and that man shall neither make nor take one here ! Over 
your own city, at least, you have power ; but will vou stand 
the test when it comes ? Then do not try to avoid it. For 
one thing only I blush — that a Fugitive has ever fled from 
here to Canada. Let it not happen again, I charge you, if 
you are Avhat you tliink you are. No longer conceal Fugitives 
and help them on, but show them and defend them. I,et 
the Underground Railroad stop here ! Say to the South that 
Worcester, though a part of a Republic, shall be as free as if 
ruled by a Queen ! Hear, O Richmond I and give ear, O 
Carolina ! henceforth Worcester is Canada to the Slave ! 
And what will Worcester be to the kidnapper ? I dare not 
tell ; and I fear that the poor sinner himself, if once recog- 
nized in oiu- streets, would scarcely get back to tell the tale. 

I do not discoiu'age more peaceable instrumentalities ; 
would to God that no other were ever needful. Make laws, 
if you can, though you have State processes already, if you 
had officers to enforce them ; and, indeed, what can any State 
process do, except to legalize nullification ? Use politics, if 
you can make them worth using, though a coalition adminis- 
tration proved as powerless, in the Sims case, as a Whig 
administration has proved now. But the disease lies deeper 
than these remedies can reach. It is all idle to try to save 
men by law and order, merely, wliile the men themselves 
grow selfish and timid, and are only ready to talk of Liberty, 
and risk nothing for it. Our people have no active physical 
habits ; theu* intellects are sharpened, but their bodies, and 



MASSACHUSETTS IN MOl UNlN(i, l5 

even their heai'ts, are left untrained ; they learn only (as a 
French satirist once said,) the fear of God and the love of 
money ; they arc taught that they OAve the Avorld notliing, 
but that the Avorhl oavcs tlicni a living, and so they make a 
living ; but the fresh, strong spirit of Liberty droops and 
decays, and only makes a dying. I charge you, parents, do 
not be so easily satisfied ; encourage nobler instincts in your 
children, and appeal to nobler principles ; teach your daugh- 
ter that life is sometliing more than di-ess and show, and your 
son that there is some nobler aim in existence than a good 
bai'gain, and a fast horse, and an oyster supper. Let us have 
the brave, simple instincts of Circassian mountaineers, with- 
out then- ignorance ; and the unfaltering moral courage of 
the Pui'itans, without their superstition ; so that we may 
show the world that a community may be educated in brain 
without becoming coAvardly in body ; and that a people 
without a standing army may yet rise as one man, when 
Freedom needs defenders. 

May God help us so to redeem this oppressed and bleeding 
State, and to bring this people back to that smiple love of 
Liberty, without which it must cUe amidst its luxuries, like 
the sad nations of the elder world. . INIay we gain more ii"on 
in oiu" souls, and have it in the right place ; — have soft 
hearts and hard Avills; not as now, soft wills and hai-d hearts. 
Then will the ii'on break the Northern iron and the steel no 
longer ; and " God save the Commomvealth of Massachu- 
setts ! " will be at last a hope fulfilled. 



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